Returning to the central themes that drove his previous campaigns, repeat GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump appeared in Southern Arizona on Thursday to use border issues to attack rival candidate Vice President Kamala Harris, excoriating her for her role in the Biden administration.

Trump, set to speak Friday in Glendale, Ariz., journeyed south of Sierra Vista to the border with Mexico for a photo opportunity in the rugged Montezuma Pass area.

With the steel border wall at his flank and a long road rising up to a ridgeline in the Coronado National Forest, the former Republican president went back to his greatest hits, describing what he said is crime caused by illegal immigrants, and a faltering country beset by economic issues.

“We have to have strong protection in our country, or our country is going to wither away,” Trump said.

For an hour, Trump hammered away at these subjects, once referring to a chart that showed apprehensions of migrants across the border over the last several years, and also criticizing how federal officials track new jobs in the economy. Along with law enforcement, Trump also invited victims of violent crime, including two families whose loved ones were murdered, and a woman who was brutally attacked in 2008.

Behind him, police and Border Patrol agents armed with sniper rifles stood watch on crow’s nests made from hydraulic lifts, and the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office left their MRAP armored vehicle further along the road. Border Patrol helicopters orbited overhead.

“When I left office, I gave Kamala Harris the strongest and most secure border in American history,” Trump claimed. He championed the Remain in Mexico program, Title 42, and the “safe third country” agreements, and said that when people came to the U.S. illegally, they were deported or put in in jail. He said he built 500 miles of border wall, and said the “final gaps of the of the wall were about to be sealed, then Kamala came in and dismantled every single Trump order policy and halted all wall construction.”

Unstated was that both Remain in Mexico and Title 42 faced successful legal challenges. Meanwhile, the Biden administration implemented a new policy limiting asylum and giving some migrants a five-year bar if they cross without authorization.

As campaign wears on, apprehensions plummet

In July, apprehensions at the border dropped 32 percent, and were “the lowest monthly total along the southwest border since September 2020,” said CBP officials last Friday. “July’s total numbers between ports of entry are also lower than July 2019, and lower than the monthly average for all of 2019, the last comparable year prior to the pandemic.”

“In July, our border security measures enhanced our ability to deliver consequences for illegal entry – leading to the lowest number of encounters along the southwest border in more than three years,” said Troy A. Miller, who continues to serve in place of a Senate-confirmed commissioner. Miller added CBP has targeted fentanyl smugglers, charging after the “transnational criminal organizations that traffic in chaos and prioritize profit over human lives. He said in August, U.S. officials will target the fentanyl supply chain.

“These efforts are seeing results, as CBP saw the largest fentanyl seizure in our agency’s history just a few weeks ago,” Miller said, referring to the record seizure of 4 million fentanyl pills at Lukeville’s port of entry.

Trump’s claim about the “strongest and most secure border” relies largely on the outbreak of COVID-19, which drastically reduced crossings. However, even as the Trump administration struggled to managed the pandemic, Border Patrol saw increasing apprehensions from April through the rest of the year, and by December 2020, the lull had given way to the highest number of apprehensions since 1999. Further, average monthly apprehensions were higher than they were under the Obama administration, according to CBP data.

Trump’s visit Thursday came just before the Democratic National Convention’s final night in Chicago, when Harris formally became their standard-bearer for the 2024 election after President Joe Biden — who beat Trump in 2020 — said he would step back from his own campaign.

As Trump spoke, he was joined by Sierra Vista Mayor Clea McCaa; Chris Hiser, the chief of Sierra Vista police; and Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels. He was also joined by leaders of the National Border Patrol Council — the union that represents many of the roughly 16,000 Border Patrol agents — who endorsed him in 2016 and 2020.

“We will seal the border, stop the invasion and launch the largest deportation effort in American history,” the Republican candidate said.

During the press event, he said the Biden administration let 20 million people into the country. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, called the claim “wild” and said that based on his estimates around 4.18 million people were allowed into the U.S. from Feb. 2021 through April 2024.

Similarly, Adam Isacson, the director of defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, said around 8 million people crossed during the Biden administration, however, around 4 million were released into the U.S., while over 3 million were removed, and around 970,000 were detained or removed under multiple programs.

Trump also mischaracterized the CBP One program—which allows migrants to make appointments to meet with CBP officials at U.S. ports and request asylum—and the CHNV program, which allows people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to request “humanitarian parole” and fly into the U.S. after a background check.

After landing at the Sierra Vista Municipal Airport in his trademarked jet, Trump took a motorcade to a section of the U.S.-Mexico border along protected federal land about 75 miles southeast of Tucson where contractors built a substantial section of the border wall. However, on the other side of border road are piles of concrete-filled “bollards,” once destined to become part of the wall further up the ridge.

In April 2021, the Biden administration said it would cancel most border wall projects, a long-expected move after Biden said that January he would hit “pause” on Trump’s central campaign issue. However, in some cases, Homeland Security officials restarted some border wall projects, or sought remediation work to clean up sections debris and deal with erosion caused by the border wall’s construction. Along the border here, dozens of welded panels of the bollards have remain stacked for years. A road carved out by contractors meanders over the hump of the ridge.

Some “bollards” were sent to Texas for border wall construction there, and the Biden administration moved to build new sections of wall to “promote health and safety,” as well as moved forward with remediation efforts to repair or finish roads, or protect sites from erosion caused by the incomplete construction.

The same stump spot

The ridgeline and the border wall near Montezuma Pass has become a spot for Republican seeking to visually establish credibility on border and immigration issues. In June 2022, Trump’s former running mate Mike Pence visited the ridge in June 2022 with Dannels and ranchers who live nearby.

Three weeks ago, Trump’s latest running mate J.D. Vance, a Republican Senator from Ohio, used the same spot to criticize the Harris administration, effectively as a dress rehearsal for Thursday.

Some of the rusting steel barriers were used to create an additional barrier against Mexico where Trump spoke, and the piled panels were used as a punchline by NBPC President Paul Perez.

“To my right is what we call Trump wall, this was wall that was built under President Trump,” Perez said. “To my left, we have what we call Kamala wall. It’s just sitting there doing nothing, lying down.”

“Under President Trump, we had the best policies in place that dropped levels to the levels that were the lowest in the history of this country,” Perez said. “Now we have the complete opposite. President Trump knew exactly what needed to be done, so listen to the experts.”

Brandon Judd, a former NBPC head, said he tried to work with Harris and with Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, but was ignored. “President Trump will be back in the White House, and he will secure the border,” Judd said.

Dannels said his “community is tired” because human smugglers — largely young people from Phoenix driving borrowed or stolen cars — have raced through the Southeastern Arizona county, attempting to outrun law enforcement. Dannels said over the last 31 months, his Sheriff’s Office has booked 3,762 people for “border-related crimes” at a cost of $12.5 million. He said smuggling organizations have attacked his deputies and said cartel members crossed the border to “kidnap and kill” one of his deputies.

“We have tried everything to meet with President Biden and Vice President Harris—the borders czar—this is the first presidential administration, in the modern day that has never met with us to address borders. That’s a shame,” he said.

Trump also criticized Harris’ running mate Tim Walz and attempted again to distance himself from the broadly panned Project 2025, before pivoting back to the border, calling the steel barriers the “Rolls-Royce of walls.”

Trump also returned to a repeated — and false — claim that people arriving in the U.S. through the border were from opened prisons or mental institutions, and he claimed crime was spiking and the FBI was hiding a violent crime spike by ignoring several major cities, including Chicago.

In Arizona, violent crime rose from 30,495 cases in 2020 to 32,248 cases in 2022, and then fell to 28,210 cases in 2023. In 2024, there are 13,417 cases reported so far. Homcide has decreased nearly 63 percent, aggravated assault has dropped by nearly 52 percent, and sexual assault has dropped 56.5 percent, according to data from the Arizona Department of Public Safety.

In Cochise County, violent crime has dropped nearly 73 percent, and sexual assault dropped by half, AZDPS reported.

‘We should be taking care of our people’

As part of this, Trump asked the families of Rachel Morin and Joceyln Nungary to speak, followed by Amanda Kiefer, who endured a 2008 attack by a man in San Francisco who was released by a program created by Harris when she served as the city’s district attorney.

Patty Morin described the moment detectives told her about the death of her 37-year-old daughter, who was murdered while on a run in Maryland in August 2023. Earlier this year, law enforcement officials announced they arrested a 23-year-old Venezuelan man in connection with the killing, and said he committed multiple crimes, including an attack on a 9-year-old girl in Los Angeles, after crossing into the U.S. just months earlier, CNN reported.

“We’re 1,800 miles from the border,” Morin said. “This shouldn’t happen, we should be taking care of our people,” said Morin, while gently sobbing. “And, the only way I believe that’s going to happen is to close up this open borders thing and put policies into place that were there before. It’s about America. It’s about protecting ourselves.”

Alexis Nungaray, the mother of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, also spoke. Her daughter was fatally strangled in Houston in June, allegedly by two men from Venezuela. “I just really, really, want everybody to please take into consideration how important border control is because we’re losing very innocent people to heinous crimes,” she said.

Trump ‘blew up’ border bill

Democrats criticized Trump’s visit to Cochise County, including U..S. Sen. Mark Kelly, who said Wednesday that Trump was coming to the Arizona border for a “photo op.”

“He’s coming here to take a photo,” Kelly said. “But Arizonans and Americans across the country, they see through this, and they know that there’s only one person who is actually interested in finding some real solutions to solving the issues at our border, and that is Vice President Harris.”

Kelly added that Trump tanked the Border Act of 2024, which would have increased border enforcement and was supported by the National Border Patrol Council. The legislation, crafted by independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma and Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, was unveiled in February, but after Trump blasted the effort, House Speaker Mike Johnson declared it “dead on arrival.”

The morning after the bill’s introduction, Trump posted on his Truth Social network that “Only a fool, or a Radical Left Democrat, would vote for this horrendous Border Bill, which only gives Shutdown Authority after 5000 Encounters a day, when we already have the right to CLOSE THE BORDER NOW, which must be done.”

Kelly said that Trump “blew the whole thing up. He told Senate Republicans that they were not allowed to vote for this and they didn’t walk away from this legislation. They woke up one morning (and) because of what Donald Trump said, they ran away from it.”

Kelly said the legislation would have provided funding for more Border Patrol agents, new standards to qualify for asylum and new equipment to detect fentanyl at ports of entry.

In March, U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego — who is running for Arizona’s other Senate seat — was joined by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes and Santa Cruz County Sheriff David Hathaway to push for the Senate’s obstructed bill, because funding for scanners to detect fentanyl was included in the bill along with millions to aid counties dealing with the influx of thousands of migrants, including families seeking asylum.

“A lot of folks don’t realize this, but Donald Trump, he stopped the federal government from buying more fentanyl detection machines that would have been placed at our border,” Kelly said. “And you know what that means? That means that more illicit fentanyl enters our country. When that happens, more people die of fentanyl overdoses.”

“Arizona has been flooded with cheap and deadly fentanyl – with over half of the fentanyl seized in the United States in recent years being seized in Arizona,” said Mayes during a press conference in March.

“Sadly, extremists in Congress continue to obstruct legislation that would better fund border security and keep fentanyl out of our communities,” she said. “I am grateful for Rep. Gallego and Sheriff Hathaway’s leadership on this issue. If we work together, we can combat this crisis, secure our border, and protect the people of Arizona.”

While the Biden administration sent more non-intrusive scanners at border crossings in Nogales, the collapse of the bipartisan border bill kept federal officials from installing the inspection technology. Earlier this month, Troy Miller, the acting commissioner of CBP, took NBC News on a tour of the Nogales port of entry and said the agency purchased scanners to detect drugs and other contraband in vehicles, but still needed $300 million to install them.

“We do have technology that’s in the warehouse that has been tested. But we need approximately $300 million (to) actually put the technology in the ground,” Miller told NBC News. “It’s extremely frustrating.”